Poet and musician John Hegley closes the Hay Festival's children programme
with a witty and offbeat performance

John Hegley is a master at spontaneous audience participation, with call-and-response songs and poems and humorous word-riff chorales.

In his song Grand-mère, about his nose-hair-sprouting, supposedly French grandmother, he divided the audience into three singing sections: first the ones he called "my people" – the intelligent ones wearing spectacles – and secondly, those who had betrayed his people: the laser-glazer scum (people who'd had laser eye surgery). The third were simply those with normal eyesight. "In this song," Hegley said, "my grandfather is asking for my grandmother's hand in marriage. And her feet, too, of course."

Hegley's show had singing, guitar-playing (he says the apex of his musical career was the two sessions he recorded for John Peel’s Radio One show with his band, the Popticians), poetry readings and drawings. The easy humour and a mordant take on life made it easy to see why he is one of the country’s most popular contemporary poets.

Hegley, who was writer-in-residence at Keats’s House in Hampstead in 2012, crafted a show that was funny for children and adults, and made brilliant use of the photographs and illustrations on the big screen. One was a doodled-on photograph of his grandfather. "See how gloomy and stern and under-the-weather my grandfather looks," he said. "That's why I drew a parrot in blue biro on his shoulder."

He first began writing poetry at the age of 10, when he was encouraged by a supply teacher at St Joseph's Catholic School in Luton. He still supports the town's football team and read out an old poem about their promotion to celebrate their return to the Football League.

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There was also a witty song about his sister (in honour of composer Jean-Philippe Rameau) and a marvellous poem about a camel and the three wise men, which came from his new book of poetry, I am a Poetato: An A-Z of poems about people, pets and other creatures.

It was joyful fun and a great finale to the Hay Fever children's programme at the Hay Festival.